Brattle Loop
Senior Member
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2020
- Messages
- 1,163
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I think this actually would move things along on the acceptance angle, too—you need to deliver what you're advertising. Ordinary citizens aren't stupid and they're cynical about anything the T claims in part because the T just bullshits them day and night, with the SL a prime example. It's not a Iine, it clearly is not a line, and it very clearly was a bullshit move to placate a certain contingent of the city and play pretend they're making good on a legal promise. Instead of lying about an inferior product, why not actually draw attention to ways in which things like the SL (that might not yet be true BRT) are still better than a regular bus route? And by connecting this, graphically, with other BRT-esque corridors across the city, it "brands" these new bus projects not as individual, local projects, but as a whole new 'thing' that's citywide. I think you'll get increasing buy in simply by printing this on every MBTA map across town and having the image of a Gold- or Yellow Line etched into the minds of the riders.
It's not a bad idea to revise how the branding is done, though I don't know that scrapping the Silver Line only to replace it with transit-line-size yellow for BRT-ish necessarily is the best solution (though that might only be because I'm having trouble visualizing it in my head and don't have time at the moment to mock up what it might look like to actually be able to see).
I think it's exaggerating a bit to say that the Silver Line was clearly a bullshit move by the T. It was never completed properly because Phase III collapsed under the weight of the enormous engineering difficulties blowing the cost out beyond all recognition. If it had been built, it would still be a fairly-cruddy line, especially on Washington Street and outside the Transitway, but it probably would have worked as a functional (if somewhat subpar) transit line. Of course, those engineering difficulties were the result of them shotgun-marrying two unrelated transit needs, which was a cynical decision and unforced error, and the fact that Phase III wasn't built means that now the Silver Line label is meaningless, so I agree that as-implemented it is bullshit, but I would at least in part disagree with the implication that it always was (though I agree that it was stupidly designed from the get-go and an inherently inferior Elevated replacement).